Going into last season Diontae Johnson was one of those players that many were clambering for to be a league-winning sleeper pick. While he didn’t exactly live up to the hype, Johnson had an excellent sophomore season in the NFL. Finishing as a top 26 wide receiver in all formats, the question is: can he build on last year’s production and have a better finish in 2021? We will find out with a deep dive into Diontae Johnson‘s 2020 season and get into the 2021 fantasy football projections and where he could finish at the end of the 2021 fantasy football season.
2021 Fantasy Football Player Previews: Dionte Johnson
| PPR Finish in 2020 | Half-PPR Finish in 2020 | Standard Finish in 2020 |
| WR #21 | WR #22 | WR #26 |
| PPR PPG Finish in 2020 | Half-PPR PPG Finish in 2020 | Standard PPG Finish in 2020 |
| WR #21 | WR #22 | WR #31 |
Diontae Johnson’s Production in 2020
Last season, Diontae Johnson did little with a lot. While he did finish as a top 26 wide receiver in all formats, he got all the volume, but did little with it. Having 144 targets (9.6 p/g; ranking sixth at wide receiver) racking up 88 receptions (5.9 p/g; ranking 13th) for 924 receiving yards (61.6 p/g; ranking 25th). Johnson scored seven total touchdowns on the season, which was good for 19th overall at the position. The reason behind Johnson’s lower yards and receptions comes from his issue with holding onto the football. Johnson had 11 drops on the season (0.7 p/g; ranking No. 1) with a 7.6% drop rate. Those are some of the only statistics where you don’t want to be close to No. 1.
Steelers Offseason Changes
Instead of electing to fix what could be defined as a broken offensive line, the Steelers elected to draft running back Najee Harris. While I do understand that James Conner isn’t good enough to make up for a bad offensive line, why not try and fix it? But this addition of Harris does have some significance, as I expect them to try to run slightly more in 2021. Even with a slight uptick in the rushing game, I still expect Ben Roethlisberger to be forced to let it fly during games.
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Going into fantasy drafts this season, I am going to dub Johnson as a must-draft wide receiver. What we saw out of Johnson last season is enough to make me feel very confident in saying this. To me, it is clear that Roethlisberger is enamored with throwing Johnson’s way. Even with significant struggles holding onto the football, Roethlisberger continued to look his way. I believe that the reports of Johnson have been working on handling the ball and will struggle much less in 2021. If he continues to make progress in not dropping the football, he will stay on the field more. The more he is on the field, the more fantasy points he can score. Staying on the field was definitely an issue last season. With that said, tons of people will talk up Chase Claypool but to me, Johnson is the wide receiver to draft in Pittsburgh.
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